


Wait

by oneshallop



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Heist, Mutual Pining, Requited Unrequited Love, deep trust and friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 10:56:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17181638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneshallop/pseuds/oneshallop
Summary: Despite her current respectability, Hawke was once a top member of Athenril's smuggling chain. Similarly, the name of Tethras garners serious respect in Kirkwall circles. As specialists of their respective criminal fields, Hawke and Varric work together to complete one final operation, which, if successful, will be one of the biggest heists of the century. However, unknown to Varric, Hawke has been struggling with her feelings for him a long time. As they work to bring their crews together, she finds herself drawn both closer and farther away from her dearest friend.





	Wait

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baker_and_fangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baker_and_fangirl/gifts).



Fall was just touching into winter. Because Kirkwall sprawled alongside the Waking Sea like a comtess with a glass too many, the city was protected from the worst of the elements. When it was hot it wasn’t very, and when it was winter the temperatures barely dipped below the ice mark. Her breath rose in streamy plumes that wavered, wisp-like, before disappearing.

  
Hawke strode down the dirt-packed alleys of Lowtown. Put a blade to her throat and she’d say that she liked the place, but it was in the same way that she liked her uncle Gamlen: you knew where you stood with ‘em. If you got your pay from the docks, you’d give Gamlen the copper from your belt but hide the silver in your boot.

  
Similarly, Kirkwall was a wreck. There was no street plan; people had simply built what they needed where they needed it. Generations upon generations of traders had set up shop, undulating out from the port in tight ripples. As Hawke strode down the main street, she saw not only clay brick but also dead wood stretched over pits, the rusted metal of shanties. A woman in a grey shift, hunched over with work and exhaustion, touching a light to her lips.

  
Kirkwall had character, Hawke thought. It was bloody, and miserable, and it was calcified with the weight of history. The city was encumbered even now by the bureaucratic legacies of five different nations. The place was not quite Tevinter, and not quite Orlesian, and it was certainly the farthest thing from Fereldan as she had ever known.

  
Perhaps that was the problem, Hawke admitted to herself. She liked the city around about the same amount as she liked her uncle, which was to say, not very.

  
Hawke edged the door of the Hanged Man open with her boot. The staff were setting up for the day, putting the place to rights. Only one in every four candles had been lit, and great shadowy apparitions scarpered up the walls. A stocky man, up to his elbows in suds at the bar sink, snorted upon seeing her.

  
“He’s not awake yet,” Corff said.

  
Hawke picked her way around the tables. The floor was tacky; Norah had probably just mopped the place up. “Then I’ll wake him up. Got a bite you can spare?”

  
“We’ve got a stew on the backburner. Leftovers from yesterday’s rounds, a little more potato cubed into it.”

  
“Excellent,” said Hawke. “Two bowls up to Varric’s room. Put it on my tab.”

  
She clapped him on the shoulder as she passed: thanks. The upper corridors of the Hanged Man were dark and narrow, punctuated only by narrow slots situated high in the walls. The very fibres of her muscles knew these halls. Hawke could have done the walk in her sleep. She slipped a hand into her pocket and fingered the sheathe of paper that sat there. Would Varric see the necessity of her little operation? Would he agree?

  
The truth was, she was nervous about approaching Varric. Sometime, somewhere, their dynamic had shifted beyond the camaraderie of brothers.

  
No.

Hawke firmed her jaw. If she was going to take up this operation, then she would face the truth in its entirety. She knew when their relationship had changed. It had changed when she’d taken his arm around her shoulders and dragged him from the crumbling remnants of the thaig. It had changed when he’d stood at her side as they followed red-spackled footsteps.

  
And it had changed again… in a moment that was Hawke’s, and hers alone. She bore it like a stake to the heart and she bore it like a lover’s token. It was the moment she had realized the depth of her feelings for him, and the absence of his for her. If Hawke were to face the truth in its entirety, then she would admit that their relationship had been changing a long time now. At her heart rested not the easy companionship of friends, but a shy and exuberant turbulence that was sometimes more than she could handle.

  
“Varric?” Hawke called. When there was no response, she rolled her eyes and banged on the door. “Varric, you lazy sod, open the door.”

  
There was a thump: something had crashed into the wall. She waited expectantly and was rewarded when the door cracked open to reveal a grumpy and sleep-dishevelled Varric.

  
“What,” he said, yawning. No shirt, but he was wearing hand-embroidered slippers. They looked like Merrill’s work.

  
Varric was broad in the way of dwarves—across the shoulders, through the nose, in the breadth of his chin—but his warmth, that crimson-golden warmth, was all his. Hawke mocked Varric relentlessly on his chest hair, but right now she was confronted by his physicality. She could feel the heat rising from his body, and fire rose in her own cheeks.

  
The speech that she’d been rehearsing dissolved into motes of dust. “I’ve got a job,” she blurted.

  
Varric raised a brow. “Congratulations. Need I remind you that you already have one? Defending an entire city and whatnot. Pretty high-notch, I’d say.”

  
“There’s been a sad lack of rampaging qunari hordes recently. And a body has to keep busy.”

  
“Then make do. I’ve never known you for a lack of innovation.”

  
“That’s the plan, Varric,” said Hawke, nudging him aside for entrance into his room. “That’s the plan.”

  
Varric’s room, while almost certainly the biggest one the Hanged Man had to offer, was not big by any other standard. Hawke could’ve probably fit the entire thing into the cellar of her estate. She made for the desk in a few quick strides, digging a paper from her pocket and flipping it smooth.

  
“Is that…?” Varric asked, peering over her shoulder to gaze at the sketch.

  
In the harsh lamplight her sketch seemed roughshod, even childish, but she could feel her confidence returning. She’d spent a long time developing this plan, fleshing it out from the wisp of an idea into the full-fledged operation that it was now. And you never forgot how to pitch a project.

  
“Yeah,” said Hawke. “This is the Blackburn estate. Full stone wall perimeter, enchantment on every inch. No dogs—their son’s allergic—but they’ve packed the place full with just about everything else under the sun to compensate. Wardwork, enchantment, mechanics. Twelve person staff with another ten on security, but you can bet that number will be doubled, maybe even tripled on the day of the event.”

  
Hawke paused for a second here, both for air and to parse her companion’s response. Unfortunately, Varric was an undisputed champion of both Diamondback and Wicked Grace, and his poker face was inscrutable.

 

“Right,” continued Hawke. “The event.”

  
She retrieved a small blue envelope and handed it to him. Golden-edged script lettered MSSRE HAWKE, OF THE HAWKE ESTATE across the front.

  
“The Blackburns run an annual spring auction. This year, they are ‘following the footsteps of the good prophet Andraste and looking to those most vulnerable in our city’—they are, in short, donating a marked percentage of the proceedings to the Kirkwall orphanage.”

  
“Uh-huh,” said Varric.

  
“Now, you’re probably wondering what the pay-off will be. Why the Blackburns?” Hawke said, sweating. She wished desperately that Varric would say something, preferably polysyllabic. “Good question, Varric! So, handful of noble Marcher families pulled out of a Marcher-Denerim trade agreement recently, favoured a merchant’s guild in Jadar.

  
“Our family Blackburn was one of them. Made a real deal out of it, in fact, absconded with nearly four hundred sovereigns in assets as a part of the settlement. But the family also acquired something rather special in return for their new agreement. It isn’t in the papers, of course, what with it being less like an arrangement and more like a bribe, but I’m pretty sure that they got it. Do you know what it was?”

  
She gave him not an inch; she leaned closer, eyes sparking. “The Stars of Rivaini.”

  
There was dead silence. You could’ve heard a pin drop in the room, it was that quiet. Hawke didn’t even think her friend was breathing.

  
“That’s—”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“You’re not—”

  
“No. I checked.”

  
Varric sat back, completely speechless for the first times in as many years as she’d known him.

  
“Andraste’s saggy tits,” he breathed out. “I didn’t even think the Stars were real. If you do this, Hawke—and I mean, if you really succeed in doing this? It’d be the stuff of legends. I can’t even make this shit up, this is insane.”

  
Hawke grinned. She had him. This was what she lived for: this exacting, exulting high. “Well, I was rather hoping you’d join me. Two heads are better than one, and all.”

  
“Will I be joining you? Of course I’ll be joining you,” said Varric. “This sounds like it’s going to be a hell of a story… and a hell of an adventure otherwise.”

  
Kindled from deep within that warm, quiet trust of friendship, Hawke felt something jump within her. It was the same incandescent force that magnified the timbre of his voice, the kindness of his hands. If she followed the oath that she had taken with herself at the beginning of this operation, then Hawke knew this: she knew full well why she couldn’t bear to have Varric around anymore.

  
Varric grinned at her, and helpless, Hawke grinned back.


End file.
